Rapids (10 page)

Should be able to go vertical, Keith announced, if you get the entry right. He repeated the performance. His face glowed with a sort of second youth. This time, as the tail was sucked under, Keith let his heavy, paunchy body go right back with it. The boat rose, higher and higher until it seemed to stand still a second, vertical on its tail, then toppled backwards into the rush. Oh yeah! The kids clapped. Ace!

With enviable ease, Keith rolled up at once. He had hardly been under water a second. But he let out a loud cry. Across his wrist was a long deep gash. Swinging the paddle, he had caught a rock edge, or something very sharp. More than two inches of skin had opened up wide, ragged, deep and red. Keith stared. Oh! He was bleeding profusely. Already Adam was beaching his boat in the shallows. He had a first—aid kit under his seat. Blood was pumping out of Keith’s arm. There were squirts of it. Eventually a bandage was found. They tied it tight. But the man must go to hospital. Suddenly the day has a purpose.

The main group was left to eat their lunch while four boats raced down five miles of busy river to the get—off point where the minibus had been parked: Keith, Mandy, Michela, Vince. The two men with coaching qualifications must stay with the kids. Keith had been adamant about that. Those were the BCU rules. He looked the two of them in the eyes. Clive is in charge, he said.

Hurrying down the river, with no plan for playing or learning, just one goal, to get the man stitched up, Vince finally found himself at home on the water. The sudden purposeful—ness made it easier, and the trust they had put in him. The bow swept into the current. He paddled. He reached determinedly for his strokes. The river was swollen, but straightforward. Perhaps I am a canoeist, he decided. They smacked into a wave train. He laughed. His face ran with sweat and spray. But Keith was evidently in pain. The bandage was soaked in blood. The man was gritting his teeth. Mandy was scolding him for always taking risks, showing off to the kids. How could he have known? Michela objected. She was panting. It was one in a million to catch a sharp edge like that.

At last they were paddling across a low lake at the bottom of the run. A storm of ducks rose from the water. Keith and Mandy were already approaching the beach, the get—out point. The air was humming with flies. Vince had waited to let Michela catch up. He was elated by the speed of the descent. Okay? She looked at him, flushed with effort, eyes shaded beneath black helmet. Exhausted, she said.

Course, if I go to hospital, Keith complained, they’ll tell me I can’t paddle for the rest of the week. He was up front in the minibus. You’re bloody well going, Mandy told him. She had a proprietorial manner. You’ll need stitches, I’m afraid, Vince said. Keith blew out his cheeks and sighed. Photo of my war wound, please, he asked.

With Michela to interpret, the injured man was left at the hospital in Bruneck, while Mandy and Vince drove back to the campsite to get a car. It was ten miles up the valley. What Keith was really worried about, the woman explained, was the last day, the stretch of river above Sand in Taufers, the grand finale of the trip; he wouldn’t be able to be there, which meant Clive and Adam running the show together, who hated each other. Keith played the fool, but in the end he only did it for the group. He was totally dedicated.

Vince was driving. Well, the combatants seem to have agreed a truce today, he said. It was the first time he had driven a minibus. Actually, I can’t help thinking Clive is right really. At least in general. I mean, when one of us gets hurt, like now, we immediately rush to help. But we don’t do anything for people we don’t know.

Nor do they for us, the woman said sensibly. She was still wearing wetsuit shorts, and a soaking T—shirt on a stout body. The thing is there’s helping, she said, and there’s shouting about helping.

It was mad to hit him, Vince agreed.

No, but apart from that, don’t you think, it’s all very well him having this cause and so on, we all agree with it, but in the end it’s easy rushing about and chanting at demonstrations. Clive’s never had to deal with things like a divorce, or you losing Gloria like that. He’s always worried about people on the other side of the planet.

Can’t blame him for not having suffered a catastrophe, Vince thought.

All I’m saying is, I judge a bloke by his personal life, what he makes around him, not his ideals.

He looks like he’s got something pretty nice going with Michela, Vince said. He glanced in the mirror.

I’ve seen him the same way with half a dozen others.

Really? Well, good for him, I suppose.

Turning towards her a second as he spoke, he found the woman looking at him quite intently. Her chubby right knee jerked up and down under her hand. I think blokes like yourself, she said quietly, I mean who’ve been husbands all your lives, don’t understand men like Clive. And vice versa. You’re chalk and cheese. But women understand. They have to. Look at Keith, for example, married too young, then has affairs, everybody knows, but won’t leave home, like. He has his responsibilities.

Doesn’t sound like my idea of being a good husband.

He’s stuck at it, Mandy said. While Clive is always talking about universal justice.

And Adam? Vince was aware of a social circle drawing him in. Perhaps, having lost his wife, he should become part of the Waterworld community. He would go to all the club’s events. He could gossip and be gossiped about. Except, of course, that there was nothing to say about him. What have I ever done?

Adam’s wife’s handicapped, Mandy said. MS. No, handi—capped’s the wrong word. She shot Vince an enquiring glance. Actually, I think your Gloria looked after her in hospital.

I’m really sorry, Vince said. I had no idea.

Campsite! Mandy shouted. Don’t miss the turn.

They crossed the bridge, passed the church, trundled down the track between the tents in the bright sunshine. Mandy took over the driving seat of the minibus to head back to the river and pick up the group. Vince went to get his own car to return to the hospital. This was what he’d been brought along for. Fifteen minutes later, on impulse, trapped behind a tourist coach on the narrow, bendy road to Bruneck, he opened the glove compartment of the car, found his mobile and turned it on. There were no messages. Then, driving, he called the office. It was strange. In a matter of seconds he was in touch with London, with reality. His secretary was a small Chinese woman in her fifties. Of course you’re needed, she told him, but everybody’s agreed to wait till you’re back. That would be Monday. So nothing urgent? he asked. It’ll be urgent on Monday, Mr Marshall, but not before. She asked him if he were having a good break. It was blistering in London, she said. She couldn’t remember a year like it. He told her he felt immensely refreshed.

Vince drove past stacks of timber, sawmills. The sun was fierce. There was an open yard full of wooden weathercocks, machine—carved, life—size crucifixes, curious trolls. We come here to play on the river and have no contact with the locals, he thought. A lean old man in a broad—brimmed hat and blue overalls was scything the steep bank above the road to the right. Quite probably he had never been on the water that raced through his valley. Is it really possible I’ll be back in the City on Monday? Vince was conscious of enjoying the drive, of deliberately looking out for everything foreign and unusual: the wide wooden balconies, the gothic script over shops and hotels, the weathercocks, the hay hung on wooden trestles up steep slopes, the little children in leder—hosen, the onion domes of the churches. Did I ever belong to anything aside from the bank? he wondered. Was I part of any community outside the office? Important decisions were being taken without him. I mustn’t miss the turn to the hospital, he worried.

They’re seeing him now, Michela looked up and smiled. The waiting room was a mix of tourists and locals, sitting round the walls, flicking through provincial newspapers, international glamour magazines, nursing wounds and coughs. Two or three men kept glancing at the tall Italian girl in her neoprene shorts and white bikini top. Only since Gloria’s death had Vince become acutely aware that he had never been with any other woman but his wife. He had never ‘picked up’ a woman. They had found themselves, he and Gloria, in adjacent rooms in Durham university dorms. It would have been hard to establish a moment when either deliberately chose the other. By a process of happy osmosis they had married. If you removed that boulder, Keith had been talking to the group yesterday about reading the river, which way do you think the water would go? How many things downstream would that effect? Suddenly Vince is in trouble again. With a determined effort, he asked the girl:

How many of these groups will you be getting then?

Sorry? Michela looked up from a magazine.

Will you be having another group right after ours?

Four altogether. We have a week’s break after this one for a demonstration in Berlin. Then one after another right through to the end of August.

And then?

How do you mean?

I suppose you have some other job.

We’ll go back to England, do courses there through the winter. In England the only real white water is in winter. Here it slows up when the glaciers stop melting. She laughed: We must look crazy dressed like this.

Me more than you, he said. He was wearing a grey thermal top and swimming shorts. She raised an eyebrow.

Being so much older, Vince explained.

You’re younger than Keith.

And you won’t miss anyone in Italy?

No, she grimaced.

There must be someone.

I hate Italy.

All the English love it.

She turned to him. Suddenly she was wry and sophisticated. You want to know? Everybody seems to think I’m such a mystery. I’m not. Just that all the Italian I heard before I was ten was my parents arguing, hating each other and me. Understand?

I’m sorry, Vince said.

But the girl wouldn’t let him off the hook. And when I was in my teens it was my mother on her own telling me she didn’t want to live anymore. She regularly took overdoses. The hospital, the stomach pumps, at least a dozen times. Okay? Got the idea?

Vince sensed the girl was trying to crush him by the completeness of this disaster and the sarcastic lightness with which she spoke of it. There was nothing he could reply. He looked at the young woman, her short glossy hair, tall neck, smooth olive cheeks, lips parted, eyes clouded. She thinks I’m inadequate, bland. Michela smiled rather sourly: I watched Disney films and read comics in English. English was escape for me. It was another world. Does that make sense now? Has the mystery dissolved?

Vince still couldn’t see how to reply.

She eased off: Then just when things are looking promising, Clive goes and makes a scene like that last night.

Did he apologise?

Not yet.

Might be wise, Vince said quietly.

It’s not up to me to tell him what to do. She was sharp again.

Actually, Vince went on, I agreed with him, you know, in a way … with what Clive was saying. In the end, it’s a position you can only respect.

How do you mean?

Well, that as communication speeds up and the countries of the world come closer to each other, it gets harder and harder to avoid the impression that we have a responsibility towards those who are suffering.

If you bloody well agree, why don’t you do something about it?

Like hit Adam?

Oh don’t be funny. She was scathing.

Vince was finding this difficult. To agree with someone, he said, doesn’t mean that you share their passion.

They were sitting side by side on green plastic seats in what might be any waiting room in Western Europe. She was holding a copy of the Italian magazine
Gente,
leaning forward, feet tucked under the chair, girlish and belligerent. He realised he had adopted the condescending voice he found himself using so often with Louise. He didn’t know how else to speak to someone so young.

Well, it sounds like an excuse to me, she said. I mean, what would it take before someone like you actually did something about the state of the world? Would some huge natural catastrophe be enough? Or would it have to happen right in central London before you woke up? Will people never see what’s going on?

Before he could answer, she started to tell him that she admired Clive so much because of the intensity of this concern he felt. Only he couldn’t find a channel to express it. Do you understand? They went to demonstrations and so on, they had to. But it didn’t
achieve
anything. Clive really means it, she insisted, when he says we want to use these kayak trips to get people to think differently about the world, to notice that the glaciers are melting, that the planet is being ruined. Obviously we have to make enough money to live, but that’s not why we’re doing it.

Vince listened. As she spoke, the girl grew more and more fervent. She is pleading, he thought. Her whole face was animated. Her urgency was beautiful. Other men in the room were watching. You can’t split up the world, she was telling him now. You can’t care for this and not that, the Third World’s problems, but not global warming or GM foods. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s all part of the
same
campaign. There’s a right and wrong behind …

Keith emerged from a tiled corridor. His arm was in a sling, his bearded face was pale, but he was smiling. Only eight stitches, he told them, and an order to do absolutely nothing for a month. Great. Now I need a drink.

They found a café in the centre of Bruneck where Vince noticed that Keith flattered the young woman in every possible way, winking, joking, passing remarks, until at last she relaxed and accepted an ice cream laced with rum and Keith said in all his experience he had never heard of anyone getting such a deep wound from doing a simple roll in an apparently innocuous patch of water. It was as if there were an open switchblade just under the surface. Waiting for me! Kismet! he laughed. Or kiss me, as the case may be. His eyes are twinkling.

Michela hadn’t understood. Keith launched into an explanation. Vince’s mind began to wander. The café tables around them spread out over a recently renovated square of fresh porphyry cobbles and clean stone—and—wood façades. A lot of money is being invested here, Vince thought. It was a big collective effort, to capture the tourists, but also to maintain their identity. There were baskets of hanging flowers and, beside the café door, a large wooden troll carved from some gnarled tree trunk with a face at once grotesque and madly benevolent, pipe in warped lips, hat on a knotty head, axe held in crooked fingers. Not unlike the drunk with his shack down by the river bank. Oh Vince! Earth to Vince! Have an ice cream as well, mate, Keith insisted. It’s great with rum. You paddled brilliantly, by the way. Huge improvement. Come on, the others won’t be back yet. Yes, have an ice cream, Michela joined in. She smiled with a long spoon in her lips. Come on, Ageing Mr Banker, enjoy yourself. You look like you don’t enjoy yourself enough.